TONY Mowbray praised the “quality and the grit“ of his Middlesbrough side after they continued their unbeaten run on the road with a 1-0 triumph at Crystal Palace.

Marvin Emnes’ second-half strike sent the Teessiders to the top of the npower Championship, despite having Joe Bennett sent off for two bookable offences, leaving Mowbray delighted with his side’s commitment.

“The game panned out pretty much as I thought it would, and credit to Palace, I didn’t think it would be an expansive match with load of goals in it. To score against Palace is a difficult thing to do,” he said.

“We can talk about the quality of the commitment today, we scored a lot of goals and we’re a team that is working hard for each other.

“The quality and the grit of the side was shown today, but we’ve won more comfortably in the past than we have today.

“For the sending-off, I remember the days when you could tackle.

“But that is no criticism of the official, he made some great decisions, even though we can all be frustrated on the sidelines.

“It’s unfortunate for Joe.”

Palace manager Dougie Freedman felt his side lacked the experience to get the points.

“My assessment was that it was a very close game. In the end, when they were down to 10 men, they showed more nous,” he said.

“Until then I felt we had a good game. It was a deserved draw, and a good game. We came very close but they were down to 10 men and we were impatient to get the goal.

“I l felt they didn’t cut us open at all, even though Boro are a very good side. In the end the lack of defensive duties cost us the game.

“They had one clear-cut chance which they converted, they were more of a team. We had a couple of decent chances.

“I thought we were decent today, but we were naive in the last 20 minutes – we kept rushing our crosses.